Polystyrene Abstract Sculptures

“From the verb suchen (to seek) the Germans make the present participle suchend, and use it substantivized, der Suchende (he who seeks), to designate those men who are not satisfied ...

Circus bear on bicycle , 2022 Polystyrene, wood, aluminum and industrial paints 35 x 45 x 5 cm 14 x 18 x 2 in As an Industrial designer, I was trained t...

Circus Elephant , 2022 Polystyrene, wood, aluminum and industrial paints 40 x 35 x 5 cm 16 x 14 x 2 in As an Industrial designer, I was trained to perform the creative act of dete...

Circus Seals , 2022 Polystyrene, wood, aluminum and industrial paints 35 x 45 x 5 cm 14 x 18 x 2 in As an Industrial designer, I was trained to perform the creative act of determi...

Blueprint is a sculpture made from polystyrene, wood, and spray foam fused with an outer layer of iridescent fabric, cement, spray paint, and a steel grab bar...

Colleen Wolstenholme’s interest in the brain has flowed from her longstanding practice of making meticulous impressions of pharmaceutical drugs, such as Xanax, Prozac and Adderal, cr...

Colleen Wolstenholme’s interest in the brain has flowed from her longstanding practice of making meticulous impressions of pharmaceutical drugs, such as Xanax, Prozac and Adderal, cr...

Colleen Wolstenholme’s interest in the brain has flowed from her longstanding practice of making meticulous impressions of pharmaceutical drugs, such as Xanax, Prozac and Adderal, cr...

Colleen Wolstenholme’s interest in the brain has flowed from her longstanding practice of making meticulous impressions of pharmaceutical drugs, such as Xanax, Prozac and Adderal, cr...

Colleen Wolstenholme’s interest in the brain has flowed from her longstanding practice of making meticulous impressions of pharmaceutical drugs, such as Xanax, Prozac and Adderal, cr...

Colleen Wolstenholme’s interest in the brain has flowed from her longstanding practice of making meticulous impressions of pharmaceutical drugs, such as Xanax, Prozac and Adderal, cr...

Colleen Wolstenholme’s interest in the brain has flowed from her longstanding practice of making meticulous impressions of pharmaceutical drugs, such as Xanax, Prozac and Adderal, cr...

Colleen Wolstenholme’s interest in the brain has flowed from her longstanding practice of making meticulous impressions of pharmaceutical drugs, such as Xanax, Prozac and Adderal, cr...

Born in 1983, Karine Payette lives and works in Montreal. As a multidisciplinary artist, her work spans installation, photography, and video. She constructs playful, dreamlike larg...

Text by Nancy Webb It’s Saturday night and Karine Payette is in her studio. We meander into a conversation about the dog she used to have and her soft spot for German shepherds, an intensely obedient and loyal breed in a deceivingly wolf-like package. Payette’s most recent series of photographs, sculptures and video work seem to speak directly to this preoccupation with the multifaceted nature of human-animal relationships—the dialogues of control, intimacy, violence and domestication that subtly take place on an interspecies level. Her workspace is part laboratory, part prop closet—a bowl of fur sits not far from her computer. Somehow in this bright, open, chemical-clean scented room, Payette conjures wildness. We are taken to a strange place, the borderlands of interspecies mingling. At one extreme of the animal-human dynamics scale is the stalwart compliance of a professionally trained German shepherd who responds to commands with robotic precision. Here, power is comfortably held by an off-screen voice, animality pacified by a set of linguistic prompts. At the other end of the scale is a sculpture of a human figure clad in red, sharing a languorous kiss with a wolf. The story of Little Red Riding Hood is immediately called to mind, except that here our hooded protagonist seems to have bailed on grandmother’s orders, instead opting for a forest floor make-out with her canine stalker. This taboo mise-en-scène is a brazen inquiry into the boundaries we maintain with our animal counterparts. Its scale and three-dimensionality contribute to a feeling of immersion that the artist has been courting with her work for the past several years. It feels as though you’ve just walked in on something: you are implicated and your discomfort is like an invisible mist that coats these inanimate beings. Elsewhere in Payette’s suite of anthropomorphic works, the demarcation between species grows even fainter. A photographic series depicts the slow encroachment of fur, scales and feathers on human skin—a striking process of contamination facilitated by touch. The fusion of flesh, charcoal cat fur and a pale silky dress...

Born in 1983, Karine Payette lives and works in Montreal. As a multidisciplinary artist, her work spans installation, photography, and video. She constructs playful, dreamlike larg...

Cotton and Acrylic Yarns, Polystyrene